How Blue States Got Around the GOP’s Efforts to Ban Abortion in Red States

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill threatened to sue California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for refusing to extradite doctors accused of mailing abortion pills, but has not followed through weeks later. Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C. have enacted "shield laws" that prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with abortion prosecutions and block extradition of providers, allowing telemedicine operators to send abortion pills across state lines—resulting in nearly 15,000 abortions per month in shield states and an unexpected post-Dobbs increase in overall abortion access rather than the predicted decline. Texas recorded almost 4,200 women accessing abortion via telehealth in June despite a near-total ban, and Louisiana sees more than 900 patients monthly obtaining abortion pills remotely despite classifying abortion medications as controlled substances. Republican attorneys general, including Texas AG Ken Paxton, have urged Congress to pass federal legislation invalidating shield laws, accusing blue states of "nullifying" red-state abortion bans. Connecticut's first-in-the-nation shield law, signed in May 2022, was modeled after 19th-century "personal liberty laws" Northern states used to resist the Fugitive Slave Act.